Boxed In: the UC system’s ethnicity representation
by Special Correspondent Fatemeh Fakhraie
When I went to college at the University of Utah, there was no box for me to check. There was no “Middle Eastern” and there was definitely no “bi- or multi-racial.” I’d like to think that the U of U has since updated their ethnicity data, but I can’t be sure.
When I applied to graduate school, I practically wet my pants when I saw “Middle Eastern” on the online application. I was overjoyed to think that my regional ethnicity was included. I happily checked “Middle Eastern”, ignoring the line for “Other,” where I could have specified “bi-racial.”
Currently, if you fill out an application on the Oregon State University’s website, there is a drop-down box of ethnicities, with an almost exhaustive list. They divided “Middle Eastern” and “North African” to make sure all ethnicities within these groups were covered, and the lists were fairly inclusive. Hazaras, Maronites, Baluchis, and other under-represented Middle Easterners were under “Middle Eastern.”
However, there is still no option for multi- or bi-racial.
Last March, several Middle Eastern UCLA student groups began a lobby to expand the University of California application ethnicity check boxes to include ethnicities such as Arab, Persian, Afghan, etc. It’s mind-boggling that the UC system would still not have up-to-date ethnicity representation on its applications, especially since California has high concentrations of West Asian diasporas in California (they don’t call it “Tehrangeles” for nothing).
The University of California system updated its ethnicity check boxes in 2007, when the Asian Pacific American Coalition (APAC) started the “Count Me In!” campaign, intended to break down the different groups pushed together under the category “Asian/Pacific Islander.” The campaign successfully put 23 new ethnicities on the application, including Samoan, Pakistani, and Hmong, and aims to improve census and research data on these specific groups’ college attendance patterns, financial aid packages, and student representation.
The first thing I thought when I read about the previous campaign was, “Lots of West Asian ethnicities are technically Asian because regionally they are on Asian continent. Why weren’t any of them included in this campaign?” Erin Pangilinan, a member of the APC campaign, stated that the campaign’s ethnicity representations were based off California Assembly Bill 295 (which included a call for “state entities that currently collect demographic data regarding the ancestry or ethnic origin of Californians to also make a separate category and tabulation for specified Asian and Chamorro, Indonesian, Malaysian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Taiwanese, Thai, and Tongan”) and the 2000 U.S. Census, which stated that the aforementioned specific ethnicities have the largest populations in the United States. She stated that the campaign “was not intended to be exclusive, instead it is starting point to have a more inclusive and comprehensive admissions policy.”
The second issue that arose was that many of the “ethnicities” on the list were not actually ethnicities, but nationalities (Pakistani, Taiwanese, etc). Pangilinan explained that the campaign focused on ethnicities provided by the Census, which brings up more questions about ethnic representation in governmental processes. Constructing nationalities as synonymous with ethnicities creates troubling deficiencies in ethnic representation within nations, erringly homogenizing the ethnic populace.
This led me to question the inclusivity and strategy of the current campaign. I spoke with Faisal Attrache from UCLA’s United Arab Society. He said that the campaign is not aiming for a “Middle Eastern” designation: “We are attempting to gain representation of Middle Eastern minorities, but we do not want it to be under the heading of ‘Middle Eastern’ for many reasons. It is a term with an unclear meaning and sometimes excludes several groups that we would like to include in the campaign. Ideally, we would like all the categories to standalone and not be grouped under ‘Middle Eastern’ or ‘Near Eastern’, because after all, the region we represent stretches from Central Asia to Western Africa.”
The campaign’s aim at a designation other than “Middle Eastern” is a relief: “Middle Eastern” is a term that’s left over from the colonial period, and is fairly misleading ethnically. “West Asian” includes much of the Middle East, including Arabs, but leaves out North Africa, a region which is heavily ethnically Arab. But I do have a fair skepticism at the stand-alone designations: if every other group has overarching categories, these ethnicities will most likely have one, too.
While I’m overjoyed that we (meaning underrepresented West Asian groups) might finally be included on the applications, I still worry about all those who aren’t being represented, and won’t be unless they lobby (or someone lobbies for them). Attrache mentioned that student groups at UCLA representing these ethnicities coordinate the campaign, and so Arab, Persian, Afghan, Armenian, and Assyrian students will be included. But no conclusive list has been agreed upon at this time, and so it’s difficult to say whether ethnicities that don’t have a large student presence on campus will be represented accurately or at all, especially if they are a significant minority in their home region. Because of the numerous and varied ethnicities in these regions, it’s almost certain that someone will get left out, which feels wrong in the current “We’re here, we’re [insert ethnicity], get used to us!” climate.
There’s also the fact that the box system itself is flawed, not just because of any possible lacks in representation, but because it historically leaves out bi- and multi-racial individuals. While the bi- or multi-racial designation could appear with a line for clarification, universities that use a drop-down box format have no way of collecting data about bi- or multi-racial students because the students cannot specify their racial makeup.
A blank line would illustrate better how people define themselves through their ethnicities and would be less likely to pigeonhole respondents into a group they don’t feel they identify with. It would also be welcoming for bi- or multi-racial students (much better than check all that apply).
The difficult logistics aside, this is an important campaign, just like it was two years ago. Not only will it give university statisticians and financial aid operators a better idea of the population indicators, but it can help the community at large gauge where it is on the local university scale in terms of representation, participation, and inclusion. It may also lead to an overall overhaul of the ethnicity system, recognizing differences among ethnicities under other categories previously bunched together (“Hispanic”, anyone?) and inaccurately represented.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
atlasien wrote:
I’m very cynical about all the East/West/Central Asia ethnic-umbrella nomenclatures.
There’s an appeal to a kind of scientific legitimacy. But who decides where East/West/Central starts and stops?
Let’s redraw the boxes… using a straight ruler this time.
If we did it rationally, Europe wouldn’t get to be a continent, because it’s not a continent! It’s a small corner of Asia!!! I would rename Europe “Northwest Asia”. And the “Middle East” would be renamed “Southwest Asia”. The Indian subcontinent would be “South Central Asia” and Russia would be “North Asia”.
Posted 28 May 2009 at 10:34 am ¶
L wrote:
I’m really happy this issue is finally being addressed. Growing up, I always had fear/embarrassment/anxiety about classifying my race on standardized tests, applications, etc., because I always felt whichever option I chose was somehow wrong. I’m Persian, and according to the U.S. Government (and my parents) I’m supposed to mark “White.” I often pass for white looks-wise and so does much of my family, so initially it wasn’t that weird to me. But after countless (and annoying) puzzled looks and comments from others, I started to change it up a bit. Now I classify myself as Asian and if anyone asks, Iran is in Asia. End of story.
Of course, a “Middle Eastern” or “West Asian” (I believe they use the latter in Canada) would be more specific. But where would they draw the lines? The definitions are so fluid, as Fatemeh pointed out. What about countries like Turkey and Iran, which are sometimes not counted as Middle Eastern? Or Armenia? And what about South Asians, would they remain classified as Asian/Pacific Islander?
Great post, Fatemeh!
Posted 28 May 2009 at 11:02 am ¶
Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist! wrote:
I’ve NEVER felt comfortable ticking myself under “Asian/Pacific Islander” and have often wished for a seperate category for South Asian/Indian Subcontinent. Although– I did, however, have seen this on some tests and surveys, much to my surprise and delight.
I always asked my Arab friends what would they classify themselves as. One Syrian friend would tick herself under “White,” while other Arab friends told me they ticked themselves under Asian/Pacific Islander.
Posted 28 May 2009 at 11:15 am ¶
Melinda wrote:
I remember how ridiculous the categories were when I applied to college (not that long ago). On the UC app, there was one category, “white,” for “Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.” That spans three continents. At the same time, there were half a dozen specific Latin American nationalities listed (e.g. Puerto Rican, Ecuadorian). I don’t understand the logic.
Posted 28 May 2009 at 2:13 pm ¶
Heqit wrote:
Ugh, this issue — there are such headaches, and so many awful exclusions, omissions, and illogical assumptions.
I work in the Admission Office of a state university. Our race and ethnicity options on the application and collection policies have changed every year for the six years I’ve had this job. I’m really intrigued by the descriptions of schools offering such extensive (although not extensive enough) ethnicity options — this year my university has been informed that we MUST align our race and ethnicity data collection with the US Census categories. So we collect race and ethnicity separately: for race there are 5 options (American Indian or Alaska Native; Asian; Black or African American; Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander; White), and each person can have any combination of these, which at least allows for some acknowledgment of multiracial identity. Ethnicity is coded separately, and there are 3 options: Hispanic or Latino, Not Hispanic or Latino, and None (if we don’t know or it’s not indicated on the application).
I guess any of our students, employees, or applicants who don’t feel like they fit into any of those categories are just shit out of luck — there is no “Other” option, even.
Apparently staff in some offices on campus will be asked to verify students’ races (and ethnicities?) visually. That’s so stupid and offensive and fraught with problems that I can’t even talk about it.
Posted 28 May 2009 at 2:48 pm ¶
Barbara wrote:
Has anyone ever suggested a way of collecting this data so that it reflects the lived reality of the people doing the check-marking? Just curious, because every instance, no matter how fair or equitable the organization attempts to be, inevitably gets something wrong or leaves someone out, or ends up doing something as dumb-ass as Heqit mentions (visual verification? please …). It’d be nice if someone has given some pragmatic thought to designing an equitable system.
Posted 28 May 2009 at 3:34 pm ¶
Daniel wrote:
This reminded of the USC catalog I looked when searching for graduate schools a couple of years ago. I didn’t live in California before but I too was a little surprised at the number of demographic groups to check off from.
Anyways, does anyone think that one day instead of boxes maybe we can have a blank line so that we can individually fill in the terms that define our heritage(s)?
Maybe it won’t work realistically but it’s worth a try to mention it.
Posted 28 May 2009 at 3:50 pm ¶
Heather Leila wrote:
The real question is, why do they want to know? How are they going to use the ethnic/racial/national data? In health, it’s actually very useful, for a university it says …what? That they have a diverse student body? They should just give a blank space and let us fill in what we want to call ourselves.
Here’s my post about Brazilians, who have the same problem when faced with boxes to chekc:
http://heatherleila3.blogspot.com/2009/05/espanhol-e-portuges-common.html
Posted 28 May 2009 at 4:09 pm ¶
Sugabelly wrote:
So I do not like the designation North African. By putting North Africa in a separate category it’s lending credence to the argument that North Africa is not really part of Africa which the Arabs are using as justification for their (still ongoing) enslavement of Black Africans whose land they stole and are occupying illegally anyway.
Posted 28 May 2009 at 4:17 pm ¶
Joseph wrote:
@DIMA Fair skinned Syrians/Lebanese are trained to think of themselves as white in the West… especially if they are Christians. It’s a thing. But then I have known South Asians who have insisted they were “white” too–despite the brownness of their skins–because of Christianity. So I don’t think t always comes down to skin shade…
I have been ignoring these little boxes my entire life. I understand the reasons why Universities want to collect this type of information but I have never felt fully described by any of the categories presented either. Would I feel differently if I were presented with an “Arab” box? Or the mind-blowingly specific “Maronite” box?
I don’t know. I think it would be novel to actually see myself on a form but there is still something about organizing my identity in this way that I chafe against.
It would not be practical for census purposes… but I think it would fascinating if, instead of multiple boxes, they just asked incoming freshmen to answer the question “how do you identify?”
Posted 28 May 2009 at 5:16 pm ¶
Alyssa wrote:
L: I compleatly understand. I always hated these boxes. I always checked other if it was an option. I still remember the first time I saw one that didn’t have other. Not wanting to lie about it, I almost had a panic attack. I was so relieved once someone told me, “You know you can leave those blank.” Ever since then I did. But there are a lot of places that see the blank line and fill it in for me… visually (as Hequit already mentioned). I HATE when I see this. I want to yell, “I am not Hispanic! I don’t even have a drop of Hispanic blood in me! I left that blank for e reason!” But I never do, because I a) don’t have the energy to try to explain my ethnicity and b) “I’m not Hispanic,” while true, sounds like I think there is something wrong with being Hispanic, and I don’t want to offend anyone that way.
The bi-racial problem really makes me crazy. Those things usually say pick one. I only once saw one that said pick all that apply. I clicked South American and then clicked white. When I clicked on white, SM went away. I played around with it and realized that you can pick multiple boxes as long as one isn’t white, because appearantly when you mix white with another ethnicity, that white half ceases to exist.
Posted 28 May 2009 at 6:06 pm ¶
Amber wrote:
This was always confusing for me. I’m half Turkish so I never knew whether I’m considered white or Middle Eastern. I still don’t know.
Posted 28 May 2009 at 7:04 pm ¶
RCHOUDH wrote:
Great post Fatemeh! I agree that it’s really necessary for them to revise ethnic/racial classifications. WRT to how Middle Eastern Americans are categorized and how it affects them, I remember reading once about an Arab American professor who was declined a teaching post at a university because he was classified as white and the university wanted to hire a more racially diverse faculty. He remarked that by being categorized as being white Middle Eastern Americans were losing out on being more prominently represented in America’s universities and workforce.
On the other hand I’ve read that many Middle Eastern Americans are wary of changing the US census survey to include them as a separate group. This is because they fear that certain government agencies (FBI, local law enforcement) will use this data in order to set up spying rings around predominantly Middle Eastern American communities. So it’s quite a major dilemma.
WRT multi racial classification I direct you to this article:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090528/ap_on_re_us/us_multiracial_americans
I’m really interested in knowing how this new classification will change the definition of who is a minority. One interesting quote from the article is this:
Liebler noted a potential dilemma where a white student who is one-eighth Cherokee applies to college and seeks an admissions preference based on race and disadvantaged status. Should the college give the multiracial student the boost, if one-eighth of his family suffered a past racial harm but seven-eighths of his family were the perpetrators?
The article also mentions that this new classification will have an impact upon whether race based preferences in employment and voting rights will be continued or not.
Posted 28 May 2009 at 7:05 pm ¶
Phrone wrote:
When I did data entry for a psychology study, basically everything was fill in the blank. (Gender, sexuality, ethnicity, etc.) That seems like it would solve some issues. (I’m sure there are some people who say things like “human” or “martian”, but overwhelmingly people are probably going to answer correctly.) I guess you might run into these problems when you start coding, but I guess that would depend on what the researcher is looking for.
Posted 28 May 2009 at 7:54 pm ¶
Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist! wrote:
at #8 (Amber):
I don’t think Turks are considered Middle Eastern– they’re more Mediterranean. They have so much more in common with Greeks than they do with Middle Easterns… but I’m not really sure.
the other day, my friend and I were discussing what exactly Armenians were– if they were considered Central Asian or Middle Eastern?
Posted 28 May 2009 at 9:41 pm ¶
little mixed girl wrote:
hmm…where to start.
i am mixed, and i have always dreamed of having my own little box to check.
the main problem with creating boxes to check is that we can’t include everyone.
someone is going to get left out.
i can’t think of an easy way to remedy this.
either places add more options as they become aware of them; they give less options or they take them away all together.
the 1/8th cherokee example just seems lame to me.
in that case, i think that that person’s envolvement in the community and upbringing would be points to factor in.
i’m tired of hearing white people talk about their great-grandma who was cherokee or irish and how they should be given a scholarship for it.
maybe if there’s going to be a “multiracial” box, you’d have to have rules to go with it?
“if you are mixed with 2, and only 2, races, then you must be at least 1/4th minority to be considered as a minority”.
of course then that would create some other problems.
i think that keeping track of minorities and others in higher education/jobs/housing/etc is a good thing, but i don’t see any way of making everyone feel that they are accurately counted.
Posted 28 May 2009 at 10:54 pm ¶
Sobia wrote:
@ L:
“Of course, a “Middle Eastern” or “West Asian” (I believe they use the latter in Canada) would be more specific. ”
Nope. In Canada we use Middle Eastern as well. We’re not really that progressive.
Growing up I always had to check off “other” but now they do seem to have a “South Asian” box. Makes sense considering South Asian is the largest ethnic minority group in Canada.
Posted 28 May 2009 at 11:17 pm ¶
Sobia wrote:
Sorry…I mean “visible minority”
Posted 28 May 2009 at 11:18 pm ¶
Jess wrote:
I think part of the problem is trying to balance two things: recognizing the realities of how people are perceived and deal with society and giving people a way to self-identify that is as inclusive as possible.
For instance, a guy who is Dominican and black (like baseball player David Ortiz, for instance) might check “Latino” or “Hispanic” on the form, but he has to deal with the world as a black man. What should he check? The rest of the world doesn’t care how we self-identify, you know?
So what do you check if you are applying to a university and want to help them achieve any degree of diversity? Rchoudh brings up an interesting dilemma as well.
I am multiracial — what do I put down? “Multiracial” isn’t quite right, because I certainly look white and always interacted with the world as such. Checking anything else is, strictly speaking accurate, but not really honest, if you see what I mean. So I put “white” when they ask. What about Jewish people?
BTW, Armenians are, strictly speaking, considered Europeans, as are Turks (unless they want to join the EU) and Georgians, and Russians. It comes from drawing the borders of Europe at the Urals and the Caucasus. Of course, if you ask a geologist, it would be “Eurasia” though the Urals mark the old tectonic boundary, IIRC. But it’s been a long, long time. (on the order of 250 million years).
And I certainly wouldn’t lump people from Belarus with people from China, or even Siberians and Kazakhs with Russians.
Posted 29 May 2009 at 8:01 am ¶
Barbara wrote:
So, my view of this whole thing (I’m a faculty member at a state-funded institution) is to for institutions to really understand why they are collecting the information.
I think the main reason for collecting race/ethnicity/nationality data (as well as parents’ income and parents’ level of education) is to determine where there are inequities in the application/admissions process.
There are serious inequities in admissions and various groups are falling WAY behind. We need information to figure this out and continue decades of attempts to remedy the situation.
I appreciate the representation issue, but do the student groups realize that all of the individual specificity will be recoded into Census data groups or other kinds of groups? There will still be an “Asian American” group in UC office reports.
FWIW, when I construct my own surveys, I always list broad racial/ethnic categories, say “check all that apply”, Other is one of the groups and I add a line for people to specify. This usually gives people all the room they need to identify themselves.
Posted 29 May 2009 at 9:55 am ¶
Joseph wrote:
@sugabelly
“So I do not like the designation North African. By putting North Africa in a separate category it’s lending credence to the argument that North Africa is not really part of Africa which the Arabs are using as justification for their (still ongoing) enslavement of Black Africans whose land they stole and are occupying illegally anyway.”
So… you must really choke on “United States of America then, hm?
Posted 29 May 2009 at 10:07 am ¶
L wrote:
@ Jess: “BTW, Armenians are, strictly speaking, considered Europeans, as are Turks (unless they want to join the EU) and Georgians”
This is where I think the lines get blurry. Armenia is surrounded by countries that are considered non-European 90% of the time (yes, even Turkey). I think that the reason they sometimes get a European designation is because they are Christian. Azerbaijan, for example, which is right in the exact area in the Caucasus, is never considered European– probably because it is mostly Muslim. Is there a significant ethnic/racial difference between these countries? I don’t think so.
Armenian UCLA students were also one of the groups lobbying for a new racial category:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-arab31-2009mar31,0,1054147.story
I think it’s a similar case for Turks. DIMA said, “I don’t think Turks are considered Middle Eastern– they’re more Mediterranean. They have so much more in common with Greeks than they do with Middle Easterns.” But a lot of unambiguously Middle Eastern countries are also Mediterranean, and also have a lot in common with Greece. Not sure why the line is drawn at Turkey.
Posted 29 May 2009 at 11:06 am ¶
JL wrote:
Augh. When I applied to grad school this past fall, one of the universities (a private school) had a race/ethnicity question where you had to check one, and only one, option. The options were White, Black, Asian/Pacific Islander, Native American, and Hispanic. No “Other” option. No “Multiracial” option. No separate Hispanicity question.
I’m 1/4 Cuban-American, and I spent a while wondering whether I should put White (acknowledging my “passing privilege” and the fact that I am more than half non-Hispanic-white), or whether I should put Hispanic (to stand up and be counted and not let myself be whitewashed). I went back and forth a few times, eventually went with the latter option, but felt weird about it.
On my other application, there were a bunch of subdivisions of the major categories, and you could pick up to five racial/ethnic designations that applied to you, which was nice. I just picked the ones that applied.
Posted 29 May 2009 at 11:56 am ¶
Sugabelly wrote:
@Joseph: Well I guess the Native Americans must… I don’t know, but Africa, I do know, and I do know that many northern African countries don’t consider themselves African, they also treat those of us from the darker countries as though we are some sort of lower life form. Plus, there is still slavery of Black Africans going on as I type this in northern African countries and the Middle East. A lot of the time you hear them say that they are different from us and so it is okay (what do you think Darfur is about). If it were possible a lot of northern African countries would like to physically break off the map and float to the Middle East.
I find it interesting that Morocco (while solidly in Africa) is not part of the African Union but of the Arab League.
Posted 29 May 2009 at 12:23 pm ¶
Fiqah wrote:
@Alyssa:
You nailed it. Whiteness defines itself by stating what it ISN’T. Defining something as a nullity – saying what it is by first pointing out all that it cannot be – is a necessary component of the pathology of Whiteness-as-a-construct’s schizophrenia.
Posted 29 May 2009 at 2:20 pm ¶
TheDiversePurse wrote:
My heritage consist of a gumbo of ethnicities/races, but I identify as a Hawaiian / Polynesian woman. I’ve never been comfortable, firstly, with having to be categorized in a box by the government and secondly being boxed in under the “Asian/Pacific Islander” category. It really irks me when folks still write “Asian Pacific” or “Asian Pacific Islander” like there’s no distinction and Polys are just an afterthought.
I do appreciate that on newer versions of the census “Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders” have our own category.
But we still have a long way to go and I agree with the post that a blank line would be a better option so people can put what they like and how they identify themselves and list their known ancestry if they so chose.
Posted 29 May 2009 at 4:00 pm ¶
Joseph wrote:
@sugabelly
Yeah, Darfur has absolutely nothing to do with this post, which is about the difficulties inherent in trying to rhetorically capture something as mercurial as racial and ethnic identity affiliations on a standardized form. So I am not getting into what Darfur is “about” with you (I am also resisting getting into what people who use Darfur to bash all Arabs is really “about”…)
If you say you “know” Africa then you surely must know that slavery has a long history–which continues to the present–in many countries on the continent, not just the ones with Arab majorities.
While it is true that the imaginary dividing line that bisects Africa has been used to support racist ideology, there is nothing inherently racist in acknowledging that the cultures of North Africa have more in common with those of the Middle East than those further down the African continent. Are you really proposing that those Americans with roots in North Africa simply refer to themselves as “African Americans”?
Somehow I don’t think so.
Posted 29 May 2009 at 5:23 pm ¶
dani wrote:
I find it very interesting reading everyone’s comments on their ethnicity and having a hard time checking the box to match their ethnicity. The more people post their comments on their issues of choosing a box, the more it supports the theory of race being a social construct. It is all based on physical appearance than your actual ethncity.
Jess said:
I think part of the problem is trying to balance two things: recognizing the realities of how people are perceived and deal with society and giving people a way to self-identify that is as inclusive as possible.
For instance, a guy who is Dominican and black (like baseball player David Ortiz, for instance) might check “Latino” or “Hispanic” on the form, but he has to deal with the world as a black man. What should he check? The rest of the world doesn’t care how we self-identify, you know?
Absolutely. That’s where it all boils down to. It’s like no one cares what you are mixed with and what you self-identify with, they care more concern about what your appearance is stereotypically closer to a specific race. That’s how you will be labled as. It really bites because I don’t think that race should be use a social identity it causes to much confusion to an individual.
Posted 29 May 2009 at 8:44 pm ¶
EmJ wrote:
Why are there boxes at all? Why don’t they just put a blank line where you can write in your own identification (that isn’t labeled with the offensive “OTHER”)?
Posted 29 May 2009 at 9:47 pm ¶
Restructure! wrote:
@Sobia:
But on the Canadian Census, we have the categories “Arab” and “West Asian”, not “Middle Eastern”.
Posted 30 May 2009 at 4:19 am ¶
johnjihoonchang wrote:
Every time I have to fill out one of these checklists/drop-down boxes, I always end up thinking about race/ethnicity/national origin.
One day I thought that we might consider abandoning “race” on these forms and go with a more descriptive process:
1) Provide a flag “composite” or “multi” which you can select to turn single choice options into a “check all that apply” option. This way, we can account (and keep track) for those of mixed/multiple backgrounds.
2) Get rid of the “race” groupings. While “race” is still something we live with here, if people are having such issues trying to figure out what box is correct and to which umbrella they fall under, let’s not bother. While we’re add it, also get rid of larger ambiguous geographical groupings (like Asia/Middle East/etc.) Instead, we can get something more descriptive:
3) Use ethnicity. In particular, list every ethnicity (and with [1] above, allow checking of multiple). This would be a long an exhaustive list, of course, but this way you can find a people group or groups to whom you are biologically linked to and add it. It also helps specify groups that might exceed national and geographical boundaries as well as specifying those who are quite different, but still share the same nation or geographical area. This also means that white people will have to consider their ethnic background(s) as well. This might require a field that says “Unspecified” or something for people that don’t know.
Of course, if we just stopped at that, the data might be useful, but even more data might be helpful.
4) National origin: Because sometimes, people are immigrants and it might be useful for data crunchers to know whether the Bengali person entering their organization is from India or Bangladesh, or (gasp!) from Kenya, Brazil or yes, even the United States of America. This is not a question of citizenship, but rather where you originally came from. This would be useful to those tracking how immigrants are treated vs. non-immigrants and how immigrants from different places are treated. You can even cross reference with the ethnicity box above to breakout even more specific data.
5) Native Language: Sure, most people are going to be filling these out in one language, but it might be useful to get information about native languages as well to be able to tease out information about how people who have adopted the survey’s language are also treated. (After all, people are likely treated differently if they have an accent.)
6) Skin Color: There is a color bias in our world and we ought to acknowledge it and keep track of how it affects people. So have pair of sliders or a large gradient and let people tick off the skin tone that most closely matches theirs. Some ethnicities include a range of skin tones and it will help break out color bias even within the ethnicity. This also will help, in part, take over the “race” box, since race is usually a matter of perception, which skin color is about. This isn’t flawless of course, because some people, like myself, can go from moderately light to light brown with regular exposure to the sun.
This is by no means solid, since I just thought of it recently while filling out a consumer survey. It does leave questions about how to treat the ethnicities of largely multi-ethnic people groups (like both black and white Americans; should they get their own ethnicities?) and it also raises questions about what ethnicity means anyway, since, like race, it is a bit of a fluid thing.
I’m not suggesting this idea as what we ought to replace the checkboxes/drop-down lists above with, but just to help think about what race/ethnicity/etc. mean when we’re trying to figure out both our identities and how our actual and perceived identities ought to be considered when keeping track of ourselves.
Posted 30 May 2009 at 1:52 pm ¶
Jess wrote:
Y’know, another problem is that the racial categories we usually speak of make sense only in the US.
That is, the word “black” has a somewhat different connotation in France and Britain, and yet another in the US, and I haven’t heard of an equivalent word in Arabic, for instance, or Russian. (Any native Arabic speakers, please tell me if there is and what country it might be from, please! I don’t know Arabic at all that well.)
Some of that is history, of course, the US was one of the first places to try and make a whole social science of racial classification, so’s we could figure out who ought to be a slave. (At least the Portuguese and Spanish were simpler about it — but they didn’t have the “born a slave” construct either).
In any case, you’re dealing with something that is, almost by definition, asking people to say how others see them rather than how they see themselves. Dicey at best, IMO.
Posted 30 May 2009 at 2:41 pm ¶
Sobia wrote:
@ Restructure:
Oh, I didn’t know that. Thanks.
Unfortunately most Canadians still refer to the region as the Middle East. It seems West Asia is pretty much limited to the census.
But good to know!
Posted 31 May 2009 at 11:31 am ¶
Ping wrote:
I fail to see why they need checkboxes. Can’t they just have a blank line and you get to fill it in with what you want.
Posted 01 Jun 2009 at 4:45 am ¶
Erin Pangilinan wrote:
Correction: ERIN PANGILINAN IS FROM UC BERKELEY ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN COALITION (APAC), NOT UCLA APC.
Posted 01 Jun 2009 at 6:59 pm ¶
EGhead wrote:
I’ve never understood why they don’t just have you fill in the blank yourself; why limit how people can define themselves? I don’t want to hear that it will ‘complicate’ their census information; if people are filling in boxes they don’t really belong to, the information is already ‘complicated.’
Posted 01 Jun 2009 at 7:27 pm ¶
Fiqah wrote:
@Everybody who has asked why these forms don’t just leave it blank:
SIGH. As someone who has spent many, many (many, many, MANY…) irretrievable hours of her young life creating similar forms and gathering demographics-assessment data, I FEEL you. I have been told MANY times by supervisors to create forms with the “classic” (*eye roll*) five racial categorizations: African-American/Black/Non-Hispanic, White/Non-Hispanic, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific-Islander, and “Other.” This made sorting the data easier and expediated any reporting processes (which I would also have to manage). Any suggestions I made for more detailed ethnic and/or racial classifications were typically dismissed. “We don’t need to be all P.C. with this, ” I was told once by a Whites supervisor at a non-profit. For this reason I think “Other” with a blank line is not terrible when “Check All That Apply” is simply not an option.
I think that Fatemeh covered this beautifully, and often these data gathering tools are problematic not simply because they’re flawed, but also because a lot of the time, the data gatherers are dismissive of changing demographics and…well, lax and lazy. (Hate to to say it, but there it is.) Race is imagined and a construct, but of course, we all know that this fact does not make it any less real. If society as a whole is going to adhere to notions of it, then we’re ALL going to have to expand our notions of race, ethnicity AND categorizational fluidity.
Posted 02 Jun 2009 at 9:47 am ¶